Chasing shadows
by devv
Summary: A pirate is a pirate. A marine, however.


Okay. So SmokerxLaw dark, disturbing and angsty office pr0n is my first fic.

Seemed like a good start.

Disclaimer: Everything and everyone belongs to Eichiro Oda.

Spoilers alert. No beta.

* * *

It begins and ends with his shame.

A shichibukai's assembly is held in the headquarters. Again. While Smoker doesn't bother protesting anymore, doesn't mean he agrees to it. The warlords are like seven black holes burned into the heart of the marines. He is invited, as a head admiral now, yet he never went; the only remorse he has is not being able to stroll in there and put a goddamn seastone chain on each and every one of them.

The marines would definitely come to pay for this. They are playing with fire. Flames are not meant to be tamed; they would start biting back against the frail reins and spread, like a virus.

A pirate is a pirate. The words he lived by ever since he signed in with Hina and those that have not betrayed him thus far. Smoker tuts loudly and takes one of the cigars out of his mouth as wisps of ash burns the collars of his coat again. Tashigi is going to throw another fit.

It has been two months since the Punk Hazard. The records now say that the incident was all on a former G-5 vice admiral Vergo, a traitor and a spy that managed to blow up the whole island with an unknown biological weapon. Smoker is to take his place as the head of the G-5. Nothing in that report is from his own words.

He breathes out hard and closes a folder from the menacing heap on his desk. He is, frankly, tired; sick and tired, and the snow and poison from Punk Hazard makes him remember the hot sand blowing into his eyes two years ago. There were some men that broke his lines and oaths and kicked their shards right at his face, until he could not see anything straight anymore. Every child was safely returned to their parents, and that _pirate_ Vergo was sent to Impel Down; justice is again said to be victorious, yet Smoker did nothing but lose.

Nothing, so far, has changed.

There are no better men. It's just that they have to choose the best of the worst. Disgusted, he stubs out the other cigar and lights up a new one. Smoke fills in his lungs, the warm familiar growl within that calms him for most of the time. It should be simple enough. He serves the people, the innocent and the good. He didn't sign up for making armies out of kidnapped children, nor...

Then he sees something that has no place here. He stands up immediately, the legs of his chair harshly scraping across the wooden floor in his haste. He already knows who it is. "Law." he spits, like the name itself is toxic to hold any further inside his mouth.

The pirate reveals himself, against threshold, arms folded over, a sleek and a black figure clad in the same fur coat from Punk Hazard. He is more like a shadow when he doesn't want to be found, and before he comes forward out of his own volition. Trafalgar Law smiles, his thin lips creeping over the edges to his sharp cheekbones. It's one that cuts. "White Hunter."

The door that he wasn't aware was open in the first place clicks shut behind the pirate. As he curses under his breath, Law walks into the room without a sound, uninvited. The pirate approaches him, the distance closing in but not too close. The bemused, dark look on the smooth face is ready to lash out and strike. Smoker grits his teeth. Law's smile only gets wider when he sees.

"Have you been keeping true to your words? If not, I'd like to take what's mine back."

The pirate is talking about his life, the way he fondled Smoker's heart like he owned it after carving it out with one of his more sinister devil's fruit abilities. The still-fresh memories dig in and makes Smoker's hold on to the chair grow harder, and his knuckles bleach into white. But even the marine with the best of his honor knows things that cannot be denied; his life had been spared-_twice-_-by a pirate. He still has trouble meeting the faces of his subordinates, or what is left of them. He told no one about Law's association in the past with Donquixote Doflamingo.

"If I hadn't, you wouldn't be here in the first place." he gives his answer, voice gruff with what is like regret. "I keep my end of the bargain."

Law nods, pleased, and flicks his hand to his direction. "And that bargain earned you a new position, too. I ought to congratulate you."

"I don't need your congratulations."

Then the pirate has the gall to grin, too many teeth, and a tattooed hand shoots out of nowhere and grabs the hems of his coat, pulls him in. Smoker leans back, just out of principle. They are too close now, the hot breath of the pirate ghosting over his cheeks and lips. The grip is too firm. "Am I tarnishing your good honor again?" Law asks, breathy, his eyes shining.

He growls and rips himself away from the pirate's clutches. His coat now has a few wrinkles that wasn't there in the morning when Tashigi brought them in for him. "What do you need," it's not a genuine question but a filler. "If you are here for nothing, leave."

He has his last words longer than he thought, because Law tilts his face away and brushes a line along the worn ridges of the sofa he has in his office. Smoker chews the ends of his cigar and it threatens to break off.

"And if I did? Come here for something." Law's face is blank again in a second, and Smoker finds that he can't read anything off it. It's like looking into a book written in a language he is illiterate to, plain in view but still as good as being blind. Law has his face down, the rim of his hat shadowing his eyes. He felt like so for most of the time they meet.

Smoker rises up to a challenge any day, though. "Then you'll still find yourself disappointed; I have nothing to give to the likes of you."

Smoker must have underestimated the shichibukai even after he had witnessed the pirate rip the godforsaken island in half, because he's on his back again, the hard floor meeting his spine. Pain and panic is bitter at the back of his throat when Law, pinning him to the ground, crouched above him like a predator he is, smiles. A smile that does not come without a cost. The younger man purrs into his ears. "Then a pirate's way, it is."

Taking things I should not have. Smoker is about to disperse into streams of smoke when Law descends like a bird of prey and catches his mouth.

He could have spluttered and pushed off the roaming hands that now no longer hold him down. But he knows what Law wants, what he needs, have known all along since he came in; the slope of his shoulders, the slight tremble in his long fingers and dark circles like trenches under his eyes.

After all, he had been in the same room when Law declared war on the whole generation ahead of him.

And the chase begins; the pirate kisses like he wants to devour and leave only the dry bones, and Smoker kisses back, just as it is asked of him. He brings a hand to the back of the other's neck and pulls him in deeper, tasting ash and salt and blood, years of gritty anguish and revenge. Law is now grinding down on him, his hands already cleverly slipping into the seams of his shirt, nails catching on the bumps of pectoral muscles. When Smoker lets his lips go, he gasps and buries his face into the space between his shoulder and neck, rubbing in like a beast's newborn. Then he bites. Smoker lets out a low growl and tightens his hold on the slender hips above him, hard enough to bruise.

It's a war, if nothing else. Trafalgar Law, pirate with a former bounty of millions, the youngest shichibukai and the leading member of the Worst Generation, comes into his office after every meeting between the other shichibukais. The threats and banter is only for stalling, and then the head admiral of the G-5 fucks the shichibukai holding him down by the nape of the neck.

When Law opened his coat the first time and revealed his back, bare and vulnerable, he almost took a step back. The scar is deep and its gashes look back at him with a sickly smile that he has seen before.

"Doflamingo," he whispered and didn't need an answer.

Law turned and with his movement his back muscles rippled, marring the harsh lines of the smile. All the pirate wore on his face is blackened malice that Smoker hates with all he has, yet somehow pulls off a coy look under his lashes. "Like what you see?" he asked, and it's his voice that gives it away, hard and cracked at the edges, betraying the sweetened look. The signature smile of one cruel man isn't the only thing there.

Smoker never seen it with his own eyes before, but he knows the signs. It is meant to be a footprint of a dragon, a mythical creature that can only signal to one monstrous monopoly that is at the core of every paradox in this world. It can mean no other than marking the property of the World Nobles.

Law had been a slave.

It's almost like Law himself, the revelation; comes like a knife to his chest, taking all breath out of him.

The first time they did it, Law climbs up on to him, tattooed hands holding him down all talons and sharpened blades, never once showing him his back.

It's strange, because he never saw pirates as victims before. Law is an enigma; Smoker knows that Law would open up his rib-cage without his abilities and fish out his heart all with a broad smile, and that he would crush the pirate's windpipe with his jitte with no hesitation, and yet.

Smoker pities him.

Law is still vicious and ruthless, and is unapologetic about it. He serves no other than himself, before and after he joined the world government. He plunders lives and toys with them in his hands. Still very much a pirate. It's Smoker that sees things differently. Sometimes it's the haunted looks. Attempts so desperate to stand tall and proud, all hardened eyes and slanted lips. Spitting venom and bane so carefully cultivated that it makes one frown to watch.

The shadow of his past still lingers on his back. He knows. Law goes to these shichibukai meetings because he just has to stare down his nightmare with a grin face to face, only for the wounds to reopen again.

He doesn't know what Doflamingo has done to Law in the past. What anybody that owned him other than himself has done to mold him into what he is now. He still thinks it's like watching someone trying to slash at somebody in the dark with a cut-off sword. And Law comes to him after meeting his former master. He lets Law in. Something feels like it dies inside of him.

A pirate is a _pirate_.

Apparently the Ope Ope No-mi comes with a mind reading ability as well as its other unsavory uses, because Law leans in and bites, hard enough to leave marks, his bottom lips. "Make up your mind, White Hunter," he breathes.

He does. The leather of his couch is too cool between the two wrestling bodies. Law is mostly quiet, as they both move against one another in the dark of the room. They don't talk. All Smoker can take is a slight gasp or a slap of heated skin, as the thundering question of _why_ fills both of their ears, unanswered and abandoned like the small pools of their clothes discarded on the floor.

It's like a chase, because the push and pull of their bodies is violent and always draws blood. It's about hurting and getting hurt. Law don't make things easy, never have. He bites into the kiss and comes alive at his touch, only when Smoker leaves red and angry marks. Law leaves his own, as he scratches down his back and tears at his shoulders that he knows would burn under his naval uniform for days. Law takes and only takes, the pirate he is. They do all of these drowned in silence.

He breaks it first, when he sinks into the silken heat of Law's body, and it feels like another loss. The slight pain is salved by the following pant, though, as Law struggles to breathe, arching against his touch.

"Do you have no honor, bedding a marine?" A hand traces over his scarred back, and despite the biting words, the caress is almost gentle. "On your knees and begging?"

Smoker doesn't see what kind of face Law is wearing, and is suddenly compelled to flip the pirate over on to his back just because. A choked gurgle comes to him, and it sounds like laughter.

"Honor? Honor is... but a luxury, White Hunter," Law gasps as he shifts inside, the shichibukai's thighs inching apart just slightly. "Honor is something that some of us just cannot afford."

Words sink in more than he allows. He is looking down in to the planes of the younger man's back, and hips; the skin wears the look of being broken, sewn back and then broken again and again. The smile that looks up to him is shattered at the edges. Smoker knows blade wounds and burn marks when he sees one, even overlapped by many new layers.

He thinks of the seas that smell like blood, condemnation and scalpels, and how cold fingertips sank into his chest and yanked at his heart, the pain numbed but feeling violated all the same.

That's when Law turns, with Smoker still inside of him, and pushes at his shoulders. His world flips over and it's the pirate above him, hazy eyes and dark mouth slack but still disturbingly deadly.

He is circling his hips, and the grip on his dick grows tighter; he shuts his mouth only moments before a moan escapes him. Law is smiling again. "I would worry about your own, if I were you," A hand comes up to his hair, snapping his head back. The whisper is pressed right against his ear, a slip of tongue working its way around the dents and bumps, wet and filthy. The other travels down to the right side of his chest, where there was a hollowed out cut that Smoker would never forget. "I don't think you need _honor_ anymore, now, do you, your life is mine and so is your body."The voice is dark sugar and low in pitch. Smoker feels a shiver climbing up the base of his spine. The hand has snaked its way down, to where they are joined, the cool fingertips touching the base of his dick. Smoker bucks in his grasp. A finger worms its way into the pirate's opening, against his cock, and the pressure is just too much, he's tipping over the edge, the body against him tightening and spasming, as Law pants, "We are a fucking mess of a marine and a pirate, are we not, you and I?"

Hearing Law say the word pirate is strange; just like when Smoker has heard of this from before, when he was giving his last words to Vergo, voice emotionless and deathly calm, just as if he hadn't sliced open his former superior into pieces. There is something like spite, and then there are promises.

It sounds too familiar.

He doesn't answer, but Law is rambling like in fever in between the moans that curl around his ears like poison. "That's why I like you. You hold on to things that you cannot really have, I'd say...just like a pirate."

Law lets out a low chuckle at his own line, as he swoops down and bites the corner of Smoker's mouth. It's torn, he's sure, the warmth of blood trickling down his chin. Arms now are intertwined on his back, and it's almost like a tight embrace. "With me, Smoker." It's sounds like a plea than it should.

When Law comes, he comes with a hand on the small of his own back. He is clawing at the indelible ink, a scream torn out from the length of his throat thrown back.

His shoulders are bare. The coat still reads justice in scratchy strokes even when it covers the bare body of a pirate. Law is fast asleep in his couch, all venom gone from his face. He looks younger with his eyes closed. Smoker tries not to think _vulnerable, victim, unprotected_-because it's not.

It's always him that leaves first. Smoker swallows, and it catches in his throat, painful like another point has gone down against his favor.

* * *

There should be more SmokerxLaw shippers out there, seriously. I's like...perfect. With the angst-cherry on top.


End file.
